PHP is the web development language which is quite popular among the latest generation of web developers. It stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It is compatible with almost all the web servers available today like Apache for UNIX or Linux and IIS (Internet Information Server) of Microsoft as well as any other server you have heard about. Various features of PHP is reliable and lightweight making it a good choice to be used for server side scripting.
This programming language works as a script within an HTML page and the syntax of PHP is applicable only in the code and not on complete HTML document. The PHP part is processed by server and converted to HTML which is then processed and displayed by the browser.
Features of PHP
PHP is a server side scripting language that makes it a better choice than other scripting languages. It is due to these features of PHP:
Efficiency and Performance
PHP scripts are faster to execute, thus returning the requested pages faster as a compared to its competitor languages. The latest PHP 7 version is already available to the web developers. The Efficiency and performance of PHP can be contributed to its engine which provides Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation. PHP engine 5.0 comes with an optimized memory manager thus improving the response time considerably.
Platform Independent
PHP programming can be done on any OS like UNIX, Windows and Mac OS. This makes PHP codes portable to be developed and executed on any platform. This is a significant feature to consider for web application development since the application will be used by people across the globe and any possible machine on the internet or intranet.
Easy Syntax and Abundant Library Functions
It is a sophisticated programming language with C/C++ like syntax that is easy to learn and code. The basic distribution of PHP provides more than 5000 built-in functions to help in faster coding and minimizing efforts of a programmer. A programmer who has knowledge of any programming language can learn to code in least time.
Open Source Reduces Development Costs
PHP is open source software that can be downloaded and used to develop applications without any need of license or permission. A huge community of developers and users has improved PHP greatly. It is a reliable and stable programming language to make robust and efficient web applications. You don’t need to spend on hardware or software, so your development expenses get reduced significantly.
Enhance applications with APIs and Add-ons
PHP works extremely efficiently and effortlessly with all major databases like MySQL, Oracle, SQL server etc. Databases make a significant component of interactive applications so PHP 5 and above allows you to use 15 database engines and common API for database access. PHP also support XML, working with C libraries, images, email, web services, regular expressions, Java classes etc.